......
YESTERDAY, OF COURSE, there was the lengthy trip home from the beach.  When we pulled into the driveway, it wasn't quite dark, but sakes alive it was cold!
......
(Please jump ahead four days, Dear Reader, if you're able to do so without too much discomfort... [Because "yesterday" is now five days ago!]  And it is still cold!)  Can you believe it, just last night Jack Frost  (aka Jack the Ripper*) actually sneaked into the area!  Oh, I find it disconcerting and discomfiting and downright discombobulating to load up the car caressed by warm summery breezes, so carefree in my light cropped pants and flip-flops...and come back home to winter!! (Okay, okay.  I suppose one could call it lovely autumn weather; but just for the sake of complaint, Reader Dear, be a dear and humor me ["Twenty-eight degrees?!" I grumbled to my yard man this morning,  "It could have SNOWED!"  (and then I shuddered)])

Today was gloriously sunny, however.  And I've still got birthday card wishes splendidly adorning my kitchen counter top! That's what I was going to exclaim about four days ago--

I was going to tell you how the grand pile of cards and the package that my yard man carried in from the mailbox after we had schlepped the icebox and suitcases and bags and pillows and food and abundance of other, not-totally-necessary-but-dragged-along-nonetheless, items in from the car;
(how it) warmed the cockles of my heart (which took the edge off the unexpected chill in the air)!

I looked at that small stack of birthday mail (or at least I highly suspected it to be such), and I struck upon an idea for extending the warm fuzzy birthday feeling:  Open this mail the next morning! 

That was the plan.  But, dear me, the next morning dawned heavily gray.  It was raining.  I had mountains of laundry to do.  I opened a letter from my tenant in forty-seven (obviously non-birthday mail) which included this sentence: "If a landlord makes life so miserable for you (**) that it forces you to move, it may be considered constructive eviction which is grounds for legal action."  The neighbor man called to give me his weekly disgruntled report on the newspaper carrier, newspaper company, and condition of the Sunday News.  I had to rummage around in my closet for sweaters and shoes.  And I had a to-do list about a mile long (well, maybe just eight inches, but unbecomingly extensive). 

All day as I tried to snap out of vacation mode and plunge into life as I generally know it, I eyed the birthday mail and contemplated the opening of it. I wanted to get things crossed off my list, to deal with unpleasant duties, to have time to savor this little exercise in gift-opening.  But the gray morning turned into a gray afternoon and that stubborn list would not be whittled.  Afternoon turned into evening and I was still stumbling around accomplishing little.  Before I knew it, I was making supper and it was dark outside.

Then, as I was cleaning up the supper dishes, I suddenly turned to the yard man, "Do you want to come to my card-opening party?" I asked.  "It's starting real soon.  I might even serve refreshments!"***


......
.....
*Alas, all the pretty flowers!
**Nine years she's been my tenant; I just raised the rent.
***Ah, Reader Dear, it was worth the wait!
***